Do you see me?
by TheSecretSafe
Summary: In many ways, she was Patrick Jane's rock that nobody knew about. The kind of rock that he would keep in his pocket so he could check from time to time to feel if it was still there and to reassure himself he hadn't lost it. A rock only he knew he carried around... or so he had thought. He was falling in love with his childhood friend Lilly Carter and 'they' knew it.


**First mentalist story! I hope you guys like it. I'm not as talented as other writers out there but I'll try my best to entertain you guys. So without further ado, I present to you the first chapter of: "Do you see me?"**

**P.S I, unfortunately, do not own the mentalist but I do own Lilly Carter ;) Enjoy guys!**

"God dammit, Patrick…" She muttered under her breath as she looked at her kitchen. The man was like a larger than life sized rodent, creeping into her house when she cooked something; leaving the house behind when done, with nothing but dirty dishes and empty pots left behind which were once was filled with her delicious home made cooking. He must have been happy last night, she thought to herself. She had cooked bolognaise, his favourite, and her weird sixth sense told her that Jane would be visiting (again) at night to finish off what she had prepared. Despite always half expecting the grown man to "visit", or lack of better terms some how "break-in" to her apartment, it always surprised her when he did. Her childhood friend, now supposedly an adult, visited her frequently when he had the time or found himself hungry and in need of some food. In many ways, she was Patrick Jane's rock that nobody knew about. The kind of rock that he would keep in his pocket so he could check from time to time to feel if it was still there and to reassure himself he hadn't lost it. A rock only he knew he carried around. A constant reminder of how precious his friendship with her was. How he would have managed to ride through his wife and daughter's death without her? He hadn't a clue.

Her phone on the counter started vibrating,

"Hi Patrick, nice to see you've left my kitchen looking like a bombsite!" she started off amicably, her voice becoming more hostile towards the end of her sentence.

"Oh about that! Delicious, really, Lilly. Have you been taking some lessons recently? Because that bolognaise was just phenomenal!" He kissed the tips of fingers, producing a smacking sound.

"Stop showering me with compliments to distract me, Patrick. Next time you leave my kitchen looking like that- I'm upgrading my security and you're not having my food. Any of it." She threatened him. "Oh my god, urgh!" She suddenly moaned as she discovered a mug of tea with a used teabag inside hidden behind the trays. More things to scrub and wash, she thought.

"I've been telling you to upgrade your security anyway, it's secure, but not secure enough. I'd still be able to get in even if you did upgrade your securi-" Lilly cut the line and sighed. This man was unbelievable. Apologetic was not a term he was familiar with. Now she had to scrub the plates as the tomato sauce had become dry and stuck from being left overnight.

"If only that idiot of a walking-brain would actually use his _brain_ for something other than catching criminals…" She mumbled as she channeled her anger into scrubbing the dishes. The phone rang again.

"What. Now." She hissed as she put him on loudspeaker, continuing her scrubbing.

"Ah, I hear that you are now scrubbing dishes. I'm guessing you're extremely annoyed at me for not having washed them straight away… oh by the way, did you find the mug?" He giggled.

"Patrick, get to the point before I cut the line again."

"Right, yeah, sorry. It's cute when you're angry because I know you wouldn't actually upgrade your security and-"

"PATRICK." She was on the verge of snapping her phone in two if it weren't for her rubber gloves she was wearing to clean the dishes.

"I booked a dinner reservation for us tonight at La belle maison at 9 so I'll come pick you up!" He blurted out and this time Jane had cut the line before Lilly could do or say anything. This was Jane's way of saying thank you to her and apologizing for the mess he left behind. It was routine. She couldn't help but smile. At heart, Jane was still a kid who had trouble expressing his emotions. She looked at her calendar. It would be the third time they were dining at "La belle maison" this week. She sighed, laughed and put the dishes to the side to dry.

* * *

"Oh look at the time!" Jane exclaimed, feigning surprise as he looked at his watch.

"Jane… You always know the time. Don't pretend like you didn't know it was half past eight." Lisbon crossed her arms, unimpressed at her colleague's sudden eagerness to leave.

"You're not leaving until we find evidence the brother killed the victim the night before he was found dead. He has motive and no alibi."

"So did the shop clerk. But you see, the victim didn't die that night. She died two nights before that, so the brother does have an alibi for the _actual_ time of death."

"Jane, don't be ridiculous. Forensic tests show that her time of death was 8:30 pm, Wednesday." Jane chuckled.

"Alright Jane, tell me." Lisbon rolled her eyes.

"No." Jane flashed a cheesy grin.

"Jane, please tell me." Lisbon spoke through gritted teeth, the prospect of begging Patrick Jane making her stomach coil than recoil again.

"Nopes." He proceeded to lie down on his couch, arms tucked behind his neck and feet up.

"Fine. You tell us and I'll let you go even though we haven't finished the case."

"Really?" Jane suddenly shot up from his couch.

"Yes." Lisbon mumbled.

"It's quite simple really. What forensics sometimes forget is that time of death can be easily forged with a heat mat. The victim owned a heat mat, which obviously the killer knew about, so I'm assuming the killer is somebody close to the victim. It was rolled and stuffed under the couch. He or she, because ladies can be killers too, actually even better ones then males," he smiled and winked at Lisbon and Agent Fischer, "must have killed the victim two nights before the body was found. Came back the during the first day after the murder, wrapped the body with the mat, set the temperature to 37 degrees, left it until night. Rolled it up again at night, put it back under the couch and voila! You have it, a corpse with the body temperature of a live person. Now all they had to do was wait until the friend that was supposed to visit to find the body next morning where forensics would discover that the body temperature indicated that they were still 'alive' at night."

"Impressive, Jane." Lisbon said, trying to keep a deadpan expression, "but how do you know they used the mat?" she smirked, thinking she had found a flaw in his 'theory'.

"Oh, I smelt it." Jane replied, almost as if it were a normal thing to do.

"You saw a heat mat rolled under the couch… so you smelt it?" Lisbon raised her eyebrow. This man was so unbelievable in so many ways.

"Yeah." He looked at their faces of disbelief, showing no sign of clarifying what he had just said.

"Please elaborate…?" Kim blurted out, too curious to know what was going through the con artist's head when he had decided to take a whiff of the crime scene mat.

"The victim, Katharina Miles, had OCD."

"How did you know that?!" They all exclaimed.

"Guy's relax, she told me once she crossed over to the other side." He looked around to see if anybody was laughing. Nobody had found the joke funny and his response elicited an aggressive glare that was directed at Jane from Lisbon.

"I'm joking guys," he put his hands up in the air, "you really need to read your case files properly." He laughed. Lisbon hated to admit it, but it was her fault this time. She should have read the case file properly but she had too much going on lately.

"Anyway, I need to go soon so I'm going to quickly wrap this up. Basically, I knew the victim had OCD and everything in her room was so perfectly in it's place- except the heat mat under the couch. It wasn't rolled properly, something that would really bother an OCD sufferer. So I picked it up and it smelt of the victim, like sweet coconut body cream. You would have to have spent some time wrapped up in the heat blanket for your smell to have transferred onto the fabric and plus, who uses a heat mat in mid summer." Lisbon looked at Jane, blown away once again by his observational skills.

"Which means the shop clerk is the only one without an alibi the real night of the death." Cho looked at Jane as everything clicked inside his head.

"Exactly!" He smiled, stood up, took his jacket and started to leave. As he was about to walk out the door Lisbon stopped him one more time.

"Jane, it's the third time you're trying to leave early this week, what is it that you're up to?"

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple." He winked at Lisbon.

"What?" Lisbon said but he was already gone.

"Did he just…?" Cho questioned.

"I can't believe he just quoted Dr. Seuss…" Agent Fischer laughed.

* * *

Lilly had just gotten out of her shower and had wrapped a towel around her head. Wearing nothing but her silk gown, she walked into her living room to look for her hairbrush which had the habit of appearing in the most unusual places. Sometimes, she wondered whether she was going crazy as things would just disappear then reappear.

"Looking for this?" Jane smiled from the couch, holding up a cute, pink hairbrush.

"Oh. My. God. Patrick, this has to stop." Lilly half screamed as she saw the man she was not expecting to see for at least another 20 minutes sat on her living room couch. With her hairbrush.

"What?" He asked innocently, "Finding things you can't find yourself?"

"Patrick, you know very well what I'm talking about. Get out my house and wait in the car." She scowled.

"I don't know why you're so angry. I sit on this couch almost every second night to eat my dinner!"

"Because that's not creepy …"

"Okay, tell me why you're so annoyed on this particular occasion." He crossed his legs as he sipped on a cup of tea he had made himself.

"Patrick! I have a lock on my apartment door for a reason! You ring the bell if you want to come in!"

"I did. You didn't answer so I assumed you were showering and made myself feel at home." He took another sip out his mug, "See, I even made myself a cup of tea!" He lifted up the mug to show her. The mug he had bought for the sole purpose of leaving at Lilly's house.

"Ugh… whatever. No point arguing with you. Just watch some tv or something while I get ready. I don't like being watched."

"Sure." He flashed his signature smile. Patrick Jane was laughing inside, Lilly was so cute when she was worked up. He liked how she wasn't full of herself and how she was so down to earth. He also knew that her being a first class lawyer meant that if she had really put her mind to it, she could have torn him to pieces with her logical and structured arguments. But she didn't.

"It's in the top left drawer!" He shouted as he switched on the television.

"I wasn't looking for my eyeliner anyway!" Lilly shouted back from the bathroom defiantly. She was so looking for that eyeliner, Jane chuckled to himself.

Lilly walked out of her bathroom and was now scavenging for things all over her apartment. She went to the kitchen bar to look for her lipstick that she had misplaced earlier.

Jane watched her through the reflection of the window and came to a sudden realisation. He had never realised in the millions of years that he had spent with her that Lilly Carter was actually quite an attractive lady. He continued watching her scuttle around her apartment like a mouse looking for cheese and smiled. He tried to wipe the thought of Lilly being attractive out of his mind. She was a childhood friend and he couldn't afford to see her that way. He couldn't afford to lose her. Besides, she deserved so much better than him, he thought to himself. She was smart, funny, kind, strong… and beautiful. He shook his head. They were childhood friends. They had done and gone through everything together.

"UGH. Screw this. Who cares about lipstick anyway? I'm going to put my dress on so I'll be ready in two mins!" She smiled as she walked into her bedroom and shut it closed. The bedroom door quickly opened again and her head popped out.

"You better put that mug away this time. I'm going to break it if you leave it dirty behind the trays again," and with that she disappeared into her bedroom again. Jane stood up and started rinsing out his mug in the sink. They were like a married couple but even better. They kept no secrets from each other and they cared immensely about one another. Jane couldn't really understand why they had kept their friendship in the dark right from the start. She grew up with him and travelled with him as a child. His cold hearted father even had a soft spot for the girl and taught her the basics of cold reading and analyzing.

"Tadaaaa~!" Lilly jumped out of her bedroom with childlike enthusiasm.

"Beautiful as ever!" He flashed a smile, "Alessandro's going to be eating you up with his eyes again!"

"Pfft, don't flatter me too much. Plus, I don't know if I'll be able to come out of his outfit by the time we get home."

"Planning to eat that much?"

"You bet!" She winked at him and headed towards the door. This woman was going to bleed his wallet dry but he deserved it, he did live the kitchen in a state of unforgivable mess and nibbled away at her food store.

**Please review and tell me what you guys think 3 it would mean a lot!**


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